Mindy Reflection #17

I was always too sensitive. When I was eight years old I decided to toughen up. I put my dolls in a closet and picked up a cigarette. I studied black and white gangster films. My third grade teacher wrote in my report card, that I was very nice, etc. but was talking out of the side of my mouth. I think I was working on my Edward G. Robinson impersonation. “Is this the end of Rico…is this the end of little Caesar?” I emulated those wonderful tough broads from the movies who smoked, drank, carried a gun, and was nobody’s fool. That’s who I wanted to be. I shut myself down. I avoided pain but in the process of shutting down, I lost the ability to feel joy. Years later when the false self crumbled, I was once again very sensitive, but could not find my joy. I wanted to reclaim her but didn’t know how. I feared she was locked away in the closet that held all those abandoned dolls. My least favorite color is yellow. I was in a store trying to buy a dish towel. All of a sudden I felt something inside pushing me towards a yellow sun flowered towel. I thought to myself someone inside me likes yellow. I had forgotten all about that five-year-old whose favorite doll had a yellow rain coat with matching hat and boots. Yellow, the color of the sun, the color of flowers in every child’s drawings. Yellow the color of joy. My littlest self came out of the closet, and gave me back my joy.